Health, Education, and Weather

NBIX

Its drug failed yesterday and the stock dropped in after-hours trading from $16.70 to around $11. Still better than the $2.60 we paid for it three years ago. Guru thinks it might fall further before — perhaps — at some point getting its groove back. Others think it’s now a bargain again. I no longer own it.

KYTH

Suggested here at $22.70 in May, it touched $32 last night. I hold on — with money I can truly afford to lose.

EDUCATION

Yesterday: heath care. It looks as though Obamacare, for all the hysterical opposition to it, is going to make America better . . . just as the first Clinton budget — which evoked predictions of doom and not a single Republican vote — kicked off eight years of tremendous progress.

. . . Obama’s plan to rate colleges based on affordability and then use those rankings to target federal aid is smart, and he’s brave for pushing for it; you can tell it’s a good idea because the higher education establishment hates it. It’s still in the early stages, and the notion of colleges losing federal money because of low affordability ratings is a long way off. But the goal is to shift higher-education funding away from schools that make America worse and into schools that make America better. That’s revenue neutral, and conservatives and liberals and everyone else should love it.

THE WEATHER

You know the famous, faceless unknown “they”? Who do so much? (“Why do they do it that way?” “What were they thinking?” “They don’t make ’em like they used to.”) Like — say — the folks who name hurricanes? And, now, winter storms? My friend and your fellow reader, Bryan Norcross, names them! In this case, he’s “they!” I get excited just having his cell phone number. I’m that close to the center of power.

(“I hope,” as Ugarte says to Rick in Casablanca, “you are more impressed with me now.”)

Anyway, there’s a movement afoot, in the form of a two-minute video millions of people have now seen, to get Bryan and the other “they’s” involved in this to come up with different names. Watch. It’s fun. And — oddly — important.